Two Decades of Analysis on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics

The surprisingly wide national victory of President Barack Obama over his Republican challenger has occasioned quite a lot of political second-guessing, including among the GOP donors who contributed well over one billion dollars in cash to their candidate, only to be crushed on Election Day despite record-high national unemployment.

To reverse JFK’s famous phrase, it is true that “defeat has a thousand fathers” and one could certainly point to many factors behind this wide Democratic victory. But certainly one of these is the remarkable demographic tilt of the American electorate, with the share of Hispanic voters having now finally crossed the double-digit mark, and favoring the Democratic incumbent by a huge 44 point margin. Meanwhile, Asian voters increased their numbers at even a faster relative pace and tilted even more in the Democratic direction, 73% to 26%.

These grim facts for future Republican prospects have been highlighted in front page stories this morning in the Wall Street Journal and the San Jose Mercury News, as well as on Bloomberg:

As it happens, the subjects of race, ethnicity, and social policy, together with their combined impact on the political landscape has long been a specialty of mine, and my published prognostications in this area stretch back almost twenty years. Here’s a collection of a few of the more significant examples, allowing any interested individuals to decide for themselves to what extent my analyses have been proven correct over the years:

In fact, a total of 67 of my published print articles or web columns on the topic of Immigration/Race may be found on my personal website (plus another 289 such pieces on the more specialized topic of “bilingual education”). Offhand, I can’t recall a single prominent conservative or Republican leader who has ever paid much attention to my suggestions, perhaps partly explaining the consequences we see today.

Ah well once again we get basted with the another of the strangely instant uniform analyses about how “grim” things look for Republicans due to the hispanic vote, without a solitary thought or consideration devoted to putting all the voting in context.

Noting that the African-American vote total only increased by some 300,000 from 2008, it was conceded that Latino voters increased by about 1.7 million since then and that non-white “others” increased by about 470,000, and that these last two numbers were indeed “nothing to sneeze at.”

But, the article goes on to say, with a very big “But” as regards how to measure the impact of all of this:

“in terms of the effect on the electorate, it is dwarfed by the decline in the number of whites. Again, if our assumption about the total number of votes cast is correct, almost 7 million fewer whites voted in 2012 than in 2008.”

And when you then take into account the natural increase that undoubtedly took place amongst whites, the conclusion is that about 8 million whites just simply stayed home and didn’t vote on Tuesday, period.

And yet all the talk one sees doesn’t mention this 8 million missing whites, but is about the 1.7 million new hispanic voters.

Sorta strange then all this uniform, herd-mentality braying about those 1.7 million then, isn’t it? I mean … 8 million is still more than 1.7 million, isn’t it?

This isn’t to say that the growing hispanic population should be ignored, especially given its predicted growth, but there’s just a total loss of perspective here with this strange insta-tsunami of focus on it all seeming to suggest that the GOP oughta embrace open borders or something. (With it being noted that after the GOP-led Simpson-Mazzoli amnesty back in the 1980′s this did absolutely zilch to help the party with the hispanic vote.)

And, notably, the author of the RealClearPolitics piece thinks that those missing white voters were in the main rural ones, in depressed counties, who it might be suspected didn’t vote not because there wasn’t anyone liberal enough for them, but more likely due to an inability to identify with a GOP lead by the ridiculously laminated Mr. Romney and his wife’s love of dressage.

Plus, because again I think it the most trenchant observation I’ve seen so far about the election and its ethnic aspects, I’ll repeat again here Red Phillips note in an older thread that if whites in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin voted like whites in Nebraska, Kansas and Alabama and etc. Romney would not only have won but GOP would win every race all other things being equal.

Thus, even without taking into account those oddly missing 8 million white votes, by my counting if you could strategically change just a mere 500,000 of the votes on Tuesday Romney would have won. And if you could have changed a mere 1 million or so (out of the 125 million who voted), it would have been an absolute electoral landslide for him.

(And anyone remember the literal *millions* of very strong pro-Dems that Reagan managed to flip when he ran, such as union members?)

I myself am no fan of the school that says that the GOP ought to essentially start playing the same race card the Dems play only in reverse with whites. (Even though I find it obnoxious to see the lip-curling over this idea on the part of conservatives who never seem to even notice seeing black and hispanic politicos practically calling it race or ethnic treason for their racial or ethnic cohorts to essentially vote “white.”)

But objective fairness is fairness when it comes to examining the facts and statistics and potential arguments and analyses that arise out of a situation, and we simply aren’t seeing that even here. All we’re getting essentially is what feels like a stampede attempt to get us to accept that pandering in one way or another, especially as to open borders/amnesty/etc. is the way to go. And this without even considering what facts there are that strongly suggest that open borders/amnesty and etc. are *not* among the primary concerns of hispanic voters.

Romney did not lose New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa because of immigration or non-white voters. He lost them because of economic and fiscal issues primarily, and fears of Bush foreign policy secondarily.

The rise of black xenophobia and the criminal pathology in many black neighborhoods, along with black proximity to immigrant areas, has led to repeated ethnic violence. It culminated in the Los Angeles riots, which were actually anti-immigrant pogroms more than anything else, with whites being merely a secondary target of the rioters. Even prior to the riots, the death rate of Korean shopkeepers in black neighborhoods was as high as that of American soldiers in the Vietnam war, and popular rap songs have focused on subjects like burning down all the Korean shops in black neighborhoods. The media has consistently failed to report or emphasize the large numbers of rapes and murders committed by blacks against Asians, many of which look suspiciously like so-called “hate crimes.”

Similarly, black-Hispanic tensions in California have risen enormously since the Los Angeles riots, during which Hispanic families with small children were attacked and brutalized by black mobs; also, a substantial percentage of the shops destroyed were Hispanic-owned. Since such conflict between “minority” groups does not conform to the dominant liberal paradigm, it is largely ignored in the mainstream media, but perfectly well recognized by the Asian and Hispanic press.

Pete Wilson won. Not a single state wide Republican has run on the immigration issue since. For Pete’s sake, they nominated Matt Fong (may he rest in peace) one election or the other.

California wasn’t lost because of the immigration issue, California was lost because ‘Latinos’ — particularly Mexicans –are heavily dependent on government, and even into generations 3 and 4 do not achieve the level of success that European immigrants did.

BTW as someone who is in pretty frequent contact with some lesser leaders of ‘Latino’ public opinion, they are almost as pissed off at 229 as 187. Notice I said leaders — the rank and file may differ.

Let’s take a look at ‘Value Added’. In it, Unz is apparently making the case that cheap labor is good. This is kind of ridiculous for an advanced industrial economy. Somebody with some fiscal sense would have read that and said, you know, I don’t think that spending, conservatively, $150,000 for the household of a immigrant lawn guy is going to be a good investment, better to cut the lawn myself, or get the neighbor kid to do it. Particularly when the bulk of those costs, education, really won’t do much good for an ethnic group with a high dropout rate and high teen pregnancy rate.

And that somebody would have been right, as it witnessed by California’s status today. We just voted in a ‘temporary’ sales and income tax hike. Just three years before Unz’s article, sales tax was at 6% — it will now be from 7.75 to 8.5 (depending on county). And you know what, we will still have cutbacks and budget problems and more tax hikes. And we are now, despite (because of?) 229, fourth from the bottom on the NAEP math and reading.

It’s also a little bitter to read the names of the immigrant founded companies Unz touts as being so critical. Borland? Well, us getting up there who spent some time in tech will have heard of it — most will have not. In any case, it was founded by Danish immigrants — not folks from Bangalore. and decamped from immigrant rich Silicon Valley to the whitetopia of Austin, Texas. Immigrant tech guy Philipe Kahn? Not some guy of Korean descent, but again a European immigrant (you know, the group that is down to 9% of total immigrants). Sun? Been bought out by Oracle, and as far as I know its major customer is the US military and intelligence apparatus — not something I think Mr. Unz would be happy about. The other companies — AST and ALR — I was not and am not familiar with.

I don’t have time to go through all those articles, from ‘Value Added’, it seems that on anything but straight line demographic projections, Pete Wilson and the restrictionists were right. California’s native population have been voting with their feet for two decades plus now, the educational system ranks horribly on a nationwide scale, and the state is busted. Had there been meaningful immigration restriction, and control of the borders, in the mid 1990s, things might have turned out differently.

FWIW (in your eyes possibly very little), I have many times linked to your masterful 2011 piece on this subject in online conversation, as well as some of your more recent Race/IQ pieces. I imagine it would count for considerably more were it not for the fact that most of the people I converse with are liberal to moderate/small-c conservative. Still, even if the audience is not precisely what you might wish for, your thoughts are not falling into a void.

The Republican party has too many factions with conflicting ideologies: fiscal conservatives, big business, social conservations, not to mention the fringe nutcases. (The tea party, not more than a few years old, already has several splinters.) The only thing common amongst these factions is their hatred for Obama. Not much of a choice for the common man, is it?

Then, the party chooses a candidate that it was hoping could convert into a puppet in the white house, but instead got a moderate that had his own ideas. The American public is no stupid. It was obvious that here was a candidate that even his own party was lukewarm about.

” Hispanic families with small children were attacked and brutalized by black mobs; also, a substantial percentage of the shops destroyed were Hispanic-owned.”

And Hispanic gangs have been implicated in ethnically cleansing blacks from flatland LA . Just a few days ago, an illegal alien that would have been eligible for the Dream amnesty was convicted of killing a young black man, Jamiel Shaw. The killer had been in the ‘justice’ system several times, but California’s illegal alien friendly rules protected him for deportation. A black kid is dead as a result.

M_Young says: “California wasn’t lost because of the immigration issue, California was lost because ‘Latinos’ — particularly Mexicans –are heavily dependent on government, and even into generations 3 and 4 do not achieve the level of success that European immigrants did.”

European immigrants had variable success rates, you know, with Italian-Americans often going as many as six generations before a member of the family graduated from college. And weren’t many (most?) of the political machines of the 19th and 20th century ethnically based? A lot of Irishmen and Southern whites (largely Scots-Irish) were quite dependent on the job that someone in the government helped them get, even if it wasn’t a government job. And I bet the Poles, Italians and Germans did the same when they controlled the political machines.

Of course, the one issue that none of you are mentioning is unions. Thinking we’ll have high wages without unions, or without a working class that fights for its fair share of the wealth produced by their labor, is a fantasy. Meatpacking unions were busted and wages driven down before latino immigrants replaced white workers in most of the plants.

Immigration restrictions were in place from the mid-1920′s, but it took unions, strikes, WW II re-industrialization and the GI Bill to create a mid-century working class that could live by middle class standards. And the easing of immigration restrictions took place more than a dozen years before real wages began their 30+ years of stagnation, which just happened to coincide with the start of serious deregulation (Thank you, Jimmy Carter!) and the union-busting orgy begun by Ronald Reagan (may he rot in hell).

“European immigrants had variable success rates, you know, with Italian-Americans often going as many as six generations before a member of the family graduated from college”

There was no welfare state to speak of in the early 20th century, so many of those who didn’t make it went back to Europe. Further, lack of college, or even high school, was not uncommon even for native-born Americas. So the gap between immigrants and the native-born was far less. We don’t live in an America that needs much raw muscle anymore.

“And weren’t many (most?) of the political machines of the 19th and 20th century ethnically based?”

Yes, and usually we don’t think of that as a good thing. Thanks to mass immigration, they are reforming, with whites losing.

” lot of Irishmen and Southern whites (largely Scots-Irish) were quite dependent on the job that someone in the government helped them get, even if it wasn’t a government job. ”

And that is the case today. You think Mexican foremen on construction crews don’t hire their ‘cousins’ or omeone from there home state?

“Immigration restrictions were in place from the mid-1920′s, but it took unions, strikes, WW II re-industrialization and the GI Bill to create a mid-century working class that could live by middle class standards.”

As someone who has personally seen the construction unions decimated in California, by illegal immigrant labor, I know you are getting cause and effect wrong. Even in meatpacking, it ws the ability to bring in Mexican and other Latn American workers that helped de unionize plants. And then when they tried to unionize, the packers brought in Somalis, Bosnians etc. I’ve heard this personally from a union organizer.

I’m all for unions — I am not even very against public sector unions. But thinking that mass immigration helps union-type workers is economically illiterate.